Homomonument

by Ruth Barker, 26 Jul 2010

Hello,

I was in Holland for a couple of days last week, and on Friday I made a trip to see the Homomonument in Amsterdam – something that I’ve intended to do for ages. I wanted to write about it here as, as it turned out, the memorial became a little essay on Temporary and Permanent-ness.

Located on the bank of the Keizersgracht canal, near the historic Westerkerk church, the Homomonument (perhaps the name sounds better in Dutch):

Commemorates all women and men ever oppressed and persecuted because of their Homosexuality.
Supports the International Lesbian and Gay movement in their struggle against contempt, discrimination, and oppression.
Demonstrates that we are not alone
Calls for permanent vigilance.
Past, present and future and represented by the 3 triangles on this square. Designed by Karin Daan, 1987. ¹

And it’s very successful, I think. Read here for a clear description of the work. The most successful element, I felt, is that representing the present – a series of steps leading down to the water’s edge. The triangle here makes a new space within the civic arena, demarcating an area that feels generous, and calm. You might feel a sense of the sacred here. And it seemed well used. In the time I was there several people came to sit on the steps, and others arrived with the clear intention of paying their respects. And at the triangle’s tip, just at the point when it edges furthest over the canal, there was evidence of another kind of use. A wreath of remembrance had been laid there, with candles, and a handwritten note telling a private story of atrocity on a personal scale.

And so there was a delicate moment played out; a permanent assertion of remembrance coupled with a temporary reminder that, though we might intone the words ‘never again’, acts of violence and hatred are still perpetrated, men and women still die in horror, and we must continue to find ways to mark their passing publicly. What does it mean to overlay the permanent with the temporary trace of an individual voice? It’s something about detail, I think. And about humanity. The temporary laying of flowers – a gesture that is nothing if not ephemeral – becomes a powerful statement that drags us back an acknowledgement of the individual, drawn against the background of plural commemoration.

The Homomonument is far more interesting to my mind than the other contemporary Amsterdam memorial – De Schreeuw (The Scream) by Jeroen Henneman, sited in the city’s Oosterpark. De Schreeuw a monument to free speech dedicated to the murdered filmmaker Theo van Gogh. But here I feel that the poetry of the abstract’s relationship to the specific (perhaps even the balance between ideas of the whole in relation to the fragment, which are essential to the notion of civic memorial) is unfulfilled. Let me know if you think otherwise – I’d be genuinely interested.

There’s something else I wanted to share with you, because someone shared it with me today. Just a photograph. This is an image of a sandstone barrier in Chapeltown, Leeds, intended to prevent cars being driven onto a grassed area. Someone’s sprayed a single word, which somehow transforms urban street furniture into something far more complicated and inexplicable. There’s a long history of religious graffiti in this sometimes charged area but this most minimal is either the very simplest or else by far the most complicated! As always, if this graffiti is yours, do let us know.

More later,
R.

¹ information from the Homomonument’s dedication signage, on site